[[i still hold the key to my heart]]

I haven't drawn much traditional work in years - usually just badges and art show pieces for MFF and FC, and then sketches and inks in the Dealers' area there. I especially haven't done a shaded graphite piece, at all, in a very long time. I was flipping through old sketchbooks and inspired to start working on sketches and graphite pieces again, as it used to be one of my favorite mediums. So here's my first go at it. Rougher than it used to be (esp with the added black colored pencil around the edges; the pencil kept wearing down faster than I could keep up with so I'd get wood scratches on the page) but I think I haven't lost my touch. Looking forward to many more pieces, I hope. Hoping to upload the sketches from my new sketchbook also; my scanner is downstairs and my computer is upstairs so it's kind of a pain until I can get a new one that isn't also a printer and copier @_@

I've been thinking about the past a lot lately, harking back to the times when things were okay or even good, mixed in with the fear and pain and madness. Looking through my old sketchbook brings back a lot of memories. The ones I was flipping through are from before I was diagnosed with bipolar, but you could certainly tell I had it from looking through one; random swings between happy, excited drawings, fully shaded overly complex graphite pieces, spastically and clashingly colored spiky drawings, depressed sad drawings, psychotic drawings full of monsters and word salad and graphic SI or suicide depictions. But there are pages and pages of drawings for friends, comics about random things that happened, fan art and characters of things I loved, emotional and thoughtful drawing-diaries. I miss doing that, documenting my life through art. So I'm trying to start again, and maybe I can look back someday on today's sketchbooks and see how good things are right now - and also see my sometime struggles, and how far I've come.

(This is the digitally-messed-with blue version.)

Farore & art by me!